Protect me from myself
Today was a comedy of technical errors. I wear egg easily, as I’ve had a lifetime of opportunity, and self-deprecation (there’s that wonderful word again) is a virtue. Really. Here’s my story.
A recent purchase online saw me with a memory chip that just wasn’t up to spec; it formatted to only 25% of the rated capacity. Flash memory, not RAM, if you are confused by the previous statement. I’ll carry on. I contacted the seller, and he agreed that replacement was entirely within the parameters of our commercial bargain. The best time would be after work, in the early evening. With a car, a map, a GPS and detailed directions, I was on my way.
The first bump in the road involved a police roadblock. No choice but to circle around the neighbourhood and come in from another direction. Of course, in the dark I turned exactly the wrong way and so my go-around became a long loop through unfamiliar streets and industrial parks. Time to use the GPS. With a bit of juggling, I navigated to the street address I’d scrawled on the back of an envelope with a pale blue marker (Note to self, colour highly unsuitable for nighttime reading). Of course the address didn’t exist. I began to feel like a character in a bus book. Alone, in an unfamiliar part of town, with glacial temperatures and no luck finding my destination.
With age, I’ve lost some of my stubborn streak (yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus) and so I put my act in “home mode” and returned to the castle, tail at low level. The ruler of my castle explained that I was probably an illiterate idiot and deserved my drive in a cold and dark city. My skin has grown comfortably thick over the years, so I thanked the ruler for the constructive criticism and moved on to Plan B.
First, I sent my seller an email, requesting a second meeting at a more temperate moment, and then I got to thinking. The memory chip didn’t refuse to format, it just formatted “smaller than marked”. Ergo, the error might be logical rather than mechanical. I transferred the chip to a newer, faster machine and pretended to know what to do. In minutes, I had revisited the question, and this time the chip worked. Not that it was broken; but it worked better. In fact, it worked exactly as the seller had originally promised.
I wear red well, and I sent of another email exclaiming my newfound satisfaction. I’m so easy to please, these days. I only hope that the seller will accept that he had fallen into the shadow of the twilight zone; a Morse code geek in an Internet era. We’ve never met, so I won’t have to hide my face in public for the next few weeks. As the newspapers used to report; a good time was had by all.
